Tag: Grindrod

For many, including my Lady Jane, a past two-term president of the St. Marys Shakespeare Club, Tuesday of this week certainly was a special day, as it was William Shakespeare’s 460th birthday. All who have immersed themselves in his plays and sonnets and marveled at his considerable abilities with a quill in his hand may have spent some time thinking about the Elizabethan icon.

With each viewing of the national evening news, we’re all constantly confronted with the fact that the world in which we live is so very dangerous. Sadly, it seems only days between stories are reported involving gun violence. Even areas where there is great jubilation are not immune, as was demonstrated in mid-February at the culmination of the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade and player speeches on a stage outside Union Station.

As a history lover, whenever I’m reading a historical book, I’ll often wonder what would be said about my own life should I have been included in such a volume. Then, it occurred to me, even devoid of any renowned moments in an otherwise fulfilling but pretty ordinary life, there actually were indeed four history books of which I was a part.

As a guy who’s tried to support local business whenever possible, when some health adversity arose a year ago after years of battling prostate issues, something that afflicts so many men as they age, I decided to stay with our local docs.

I’m thankful that now in my 70s, I’m still able to work. I find that work provides the frame within which other parts of life neatly fits. For one thing, I surely appreciate the human interaction as I work, since my roomie Alexa isn’t really much of a conversationalist after she gives me weather and an occasional sports score.

Now that winter’s behind us, I got to thinking about how the season began. For me, always a lover of travel, a great time to get away is between Christmas and New Year’s, just right for heading in a southerly direction with my trusty navigator Lady Jane. Over time, I’ve traveled, borrowing a movie title, in trains, planes and automobiles, but I think road trips are my favorite. There’s never an extra charge for a second bag tossed in the trunk, and the seats are much wider.

Well, the great shroud has finally been lifted with our shift back to daylight savings time, and to that, I will shout to the highest reaches of our celestial ceilings, “Hallelujah!”

There is, of course, an anthology of jokes about fishermen and their wives. And, while some jokes diminish the importance of a wife relative to the importance of hauling in a nice small mouth bass, if you asked one of our area’s premier reservoir fishermen about his wife of 20 years, Steve Contini might just say if asked what the best catch of his life was, that would be his wife, Tina.

Of course, every leap year is a unique one, and every four years when one arrives, I have the same thoughts about that extra day we’re granted. Certainly, one thought is how short it seems since the last February 29. The celerity with which time passes, no doubt, is a thought that I think predominates those who’ve been blessed with senior days.

We change as we age, and I’m not just talking about the sad manifestations of physical aging. As for the changes physically, well, while we don’t recognize those changes day in and day out as we gaze into the bathroom mirror each morning to begin our hygienic ritual, we certainly do when riffling through old photos of us from decades ago which prove that things aren’t as they once were.